United progressive activists must do what the Democratic Establishment has failed to do.

We must not sit back and will the Democratic Establishment into action. They seem unable to cope with the new political paradigm shift. It is a new battle the old guard is resistant to address head on

I keep hoping that our elected congresspersons, senators, and pundits, frequently appearing on cable and broadcast networks, will say what Americans need to hear. Unfortunately, I continue to be disappointed.

I do not expect the hosts of most news and opinion programs to have the fortitude and intellectual honesty of MSNBC’s Ali Velshi, the former MSNBC Host Joy-Ann Reid, and a very few others who are fearless in calling out our fascist path. However, I expect they will refrain from being the tacit mouthpiece of the administration and the oligarchy.

Enduring the Sunday morning news programs on every channel has been difficult.

• News hosts normalized the linkage of fentanyl crossing the Canadian and Mexican borders with tariffs, which makes absolutely no sense. We cannot allow the addiction of a few million Americans that our drug companies are complicit in to affect trade policies that already are treaty-based.
  
  Moreover, whatever happened to personal responsibility? As the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, implied, the fentanyl problem is a US problem. Yet, making the economy worse would increase despair, making the fentanyl problem worse. Under Trump tenes, other countries could penalize us for guns and harmful drugs crossing their borders.,

• Democrats were rudderless and wishy-washy on every program.

  • How difficult is it to say that Democrats will not be extorted with a government shutdown to force support of any bill, continuing resolution or otherwise, that opens the door to cut Social Security, Medicare, SNAP, or VA?

  • How difficult is it to have a continuous narrative of Trump, Musk, and the GOP harming farmers and working class Americans, which harm MAGA and the Red States more so than others?

  • How difficult is it to point out that as Trump and his sycophants complain about regulations and green jobs, Biden’s economy with rules is not crashing like Trump’s as he cuts regulations and government jobs?

The Democratic establishment still resides in an old-style campaign paradigm. They funnel much of your support dollars to high-priced consultants who would not know a poor or working-class person in the ghettos, barrios, Appalachia, or the burbs.

Constrast that to the Right. They run a successful full-court asymmetric game. Any Party that can get 49.8% of the vote with provably terrible policies can pat themselves on the back. They went into every niche to reach or create a base, from dejected Gen Z misfit young men to female athletes, to unemployed dejected people, to menthol-cigarette-smoking men, to lib-fearing-evangelicals, and more. Lying to suffering, low-information, gullible individuals brings a substantial number of votes when the opposition does not even know these people exist or disregards them.

Many people who read newsletters get frustrated because most writers describe the problem well. Too often, we do not give actionable steps to solve it. I will provide individual actionable steps that those of us in the independent media and the progressive activist movement can take. Unlike the right, MAGA, and conservatives, it is essential that we center on truth even as we may use attention-seeking techniques where necessary.

Actions by Activist Movement Organizations

• Urge the party/larger progressive organizations to create 24/7 streaming channels on every platform. This is not an expensive proposition for larger groups. I have been testing this on a small scale as a one-person organization.

• Create a semi-organic group that generates daily talking points and narratives for influencers, bloggers, podcasters, vlogcasters, streamers, and on-the-streets activists to use in their daily work.

• Create a resource on our platforms that enumerates reputable progressive entities (websites, influencers, hosts, etc).

• Writers (bloggers, authors, etc.) should reference as many other progressive websites, TikTokers, and Instagrammers as possible. I have been featuring progressive social media influencers in my streams and on my radio shows and explicitly making sure to reference them on-air, online, and in print.

• Create reasons to meet in person to fight despair and promote action. Arrange frequent events, like what Neil Aquino of the Houston Democracy Project and other activists have been doing—they have been picketing Senator John Cornyn’s office once a week for 422 consecutive weeks and counting.

Actions by Individuals

• Meet and engage people in the flesh. Do not fear listening in on other people’s conversations and civilly engaging them in agreement or disagreement, even if they are not of our ideology. I have found that no matter how MAGA, I can plant seeds. Remember, you are the non-gullible in the room.

• Do not leave misinformation in posts or comments on X(Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, TikTok, YouTube, or any other platform unanswered. Provide reliable sourcing if possible and bend over backward not to be snarky, condescending, or confrontational, no matter what they throw at you. Respond and move on. The idea is to build the information base for humans and search engines.

• Share progressive posts/videos/newsletters from all platforms on yours and other platforms as well.

• Forward newsletters that you subscribe to that are meaningful to you to your email lists.

• And while this point may be self-serving, it is nonetheless essential. Support as many organizations, platforms, and newsletters as you are financially able to do with small dollar donations and subscriptions. Too many dollars have been going to high-priced consultants that would never understand the plight of the poor, working class, or middle-class, while those of us closer to the people are reaching many niches online and in the flesh, and on air with little support.

You may think doing one, a few, or all of the above is ineffective. I assure you that thousands of people doing it is more effective than what corporate media is doing right now.

I am sure there are other things we can all do. I do not believe in asking others to do anything I am unwilling to do. I can assure you that in some form, I have done most of the above, both as an activist organization and as an individual activist. I encourage you to listen/watch my two daily live Politics Done Right programs on KPFT 90.1 FM Houston, on Pacifica Network, streaming on Substack, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Telegram, LinkedIn, X(Twitter), and Twitch. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to our newsletter, which gives you free access to my five books and all subsequent books I write.